Barbara Ehrenreich comments on working in America

July 06, 2006

Give Me that Old-Time Feminism

Feminism, as you’ve probably been reading for the last 20 years, is dead. Most women today want to smash through the glass ceiling, run for the Senate, and buy contraceptives at will (not to mention abortions, at least if the fetus they’re carrying turns out to be “defective.”) But feminism? It’s just a bunch of hairy-legged, man-hating, harridans screaming slogans that were already obsolete in the era of Charlie’s Angels.

The latest nail in the coffin comes from Ana Marie Cox, the famed blogger known as “wonkette,” in her snarky review of Katha Pollitt’s new book Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Times. (New York Times Book Review, July 2.) All right, I have a personal stake in this: I wrote a blurb for the book, I’m a friend of Pollitt’s, and I’m a little on the strident side myself. In her review, Cox is irritated, among other things, by Pollitt’s criticism of women who have their little toes amputated so they can squeeze into stilettos. Cox confesses that her own first thought --“O.K., maybe not the first”—on reading about “pink-ectomy” surgery was, “Does it really work?”

Cox is not the first post-feminist to denounce paleo-feminists as sexless prudes. Ever since Andrea Dworkin – a truly puritanical feminist -- waged war on pornography, there’ve been plenty of feisty women ready to defend Victoria’s Secret as a beachhead of liberation. Something similar happened in the 1920’s, when newly enfranchised young women blew off those frumpy old suffragists and declared their right to smoke cigarettes, wear short skirts, and dance the Charleston all night.

Maybe there’s a cycle at work here: militant feminism followed by lipstick and cocktails, followed, in a generation or two, by another gust of militancy. But this time around the circumstances are vastly different. In the 1920s, women were seeing their collective fortunes advance. The Western nations were granting them suffrage; contraceptives were moving beyond the status of contraband. Contrast those happy developments to today’s steadily advancing war against women’s reproductive choice: the banning of abortion in South Dakota, fundamentalist pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control.

Worldwide, the situation is far grimmer, as fundamentalist Islam swallows one nation after another. Iraq, once a secular and fairly woman-friendly place by Middle Eastern standards (although Saddam had no use for actual feminists), is degenerating into a contest between misogynist factions of various sectarian stripes. Somalia, which had been reasonably secular, just fell to the Islamists, who have taken to attacking insufficiently covered women in the streets. Then there’s Indonesia, where, in some regions, women lacking head scarves or sporting cosmetics now face arrests for “prostitution,” and women found in public with unrelated men can be publicly whipped.

I’ve always liked to think that feminism is the West’s secret weapon against Islamism. How can an ideology that aims to push half the human race into purdah hope to claim the moral high ground? Islamic feminists would fight Islamism, and we Western feminists would offer our sisterhood in the struggle. But while Muslim women are being stuffed into burkas, American post-feminists are trying to stuff their feet into stilettos. Who are you going to call when the morals police attack you for wearing eye shadow in Kabul or flashing some ankle in Teheran—a wonkette?

Cox seems to have missed the irony of Pollitt’s title, Virginity or Death! This isn’t Pollitt’s choice, but the kind of choice being imposed on a growing number of women throughout the world. The deeper irony is that women’s right to wear lipstick, show skin, and consort with men in public go hand in hand with their rights to vote, own property, and purchase contraception. Outside of brothels, you don’t get the stilettos without suffrage. So, yes, maybe the paleo-feminists who chanted and marched for equal rights get a little tiresome at times. But you can thank them for your belly button jewelry and your right to display it in public.

25 Comments

Thank you for saying this, Barbara! That Times review of Katha Pollitt's book was idiotic. Wonkette made her name by making endless jokes about anal sex and getting drunk.Then she wrote a chick-lit novel that got terrible reviews and tanked. I guess if you're willing to attack feminism -- especially left feminism, like pollitt's or yours -- you don't need many other qualifications.

Wonkette will always be able to get an abortion, and a job attacking women/liberals/whatever. She doesn't care about other women, so what does she need feminism for? What she needs is fame and attention! And that she is getting plenty of, thanks to the Times.
Feminism, liberalism, progressivism all require caring about other people. If you don't, it all just seems sappy.

I know a woman who got her little toes amputated in the 1950's so she could wear pointy-toed shoes. She is sorry now. The little toe is important for balance, believe it or not, and she has real problems on that score. And her feet look odd.
The major irony is that she has not worn high heels for years.

Why would the Times assign "wonkette" to review a book by a widely respected writer on social and political issues? We can bash Cox, but the troublemaker here is the review's assigning editor. Clearly, the criterion for reviewing has nothing to do with intellectual credentials and everything to do with generating a form of "what's hot and what's not" publicity.
As a general comment, this was an excellent and important post. Thank you.

I highly recommend Ariel Levy's book "Female Chauvinist Pigs: The Rise of Raunch Culture" for insight into the current backlash against the perceived prudery of feminism. It's about the pretense of being sexually liberated, only on the most antiquated terms, with a modern twist -- engaging in girl-on-girl groping for guys' enjoyment.

The days of Burt Reynolds nude on the cover of Cosmo are long gone. The only gender being objectified -- if the consumption of people feigning arousal indeed represents "sexual liberation" -- is, not surprisingly, the fairer sex. According to Levy, one must not only not object to titillating behavior to join the boys' club -- one should seriously consider it, consuming it (receive lap dances), or actually performing it (Girls Gone Wild). Haven't we come a long way, baby.

Contrast this with today's cover story in the NYT about women's leaving men in the dust academically. This trend is indisputable. What gives?

Katha Pollitt has responded to Cox's review with a brief NYT editorial about the idiocy of book reviewers, with several pings at Cox. It's called "Thank You for Hating My Book" and can be found on the opinion page. Unfortunately, the editorial does not discuss any of the issues raised in Cox's review.

Frankly, I am less worried by whores like Cox who sell themselves as "talking dogs" (wow, it not only wags its tail, it even talks!) to the powerful.

I am very concerned about our home grown fundamentalists: the Dobsonites who see homos under every rock, the "intelligent design" fools, the Robertson followers. These people seem to me far more dangerous to U.S. women than Islamists in countries which are already treated as enemies by our bully-boy state. Barbara, why focus on the faraway foes when the nearby ones may kill us?

Give Me that Old-Time Feminism
Oh!, please give me a break!
Feminism has also destroyed many women's lives and aspirations. I have talked to many women who have experienced the effects of the cruel hoax.
I'm all for women's rights but; don't appologize when they go to extremes due to your incitement.
Cheers!
Victor

I am a big fan of your work, Ms. Ehrenreich, but I have to express my dismay at the casual pejorative use of the word "whore" in the comments on this post. As a tutor of high school students, I agree that the feminist movement of the last century is under-appreciated, and I regularly chastise my students for their naivete and disrespect of those women who won the freedoms they currently enjoy. I also agree that Ana Marie Cox's opinions are often superficial, supercilious, and wrongheaded. But to brand her as a "whore" is both an easy out, eliminating reasoned argument, as well as a chauvinist denigration. We can and should do better.

What is it with people who think a reassuring disclaimer negates the idiocy of everything that comes after the word "but"?

My impression of upper-middle class young women is that there are two types who shun the F-word: the ones who think sexism will keep down the competition, and the ones who've never personally had sexism bite them hard and so are sure it doesn't exist. Either way, it's just privilege blindness.

You know, I love your books and your writing -- I've taught it in classes and likely will again -- so I was really disappointed by this sentence. Dworkin is so easy to hold up as the "oh no, we're not like that" example, but really, you have to ask yourself who benefits from the way we always have to pick someone who is more extreme and assure the dominant paradigm we're not as scary as that mean lady.

Further, Dworkin gets a bad rap as a Puritan, and she's not one. In Intercourse, she writes beautifully and at some length about the redeeming power of sexuality. (I'd find quotes for you, but all my books are in boxes -- I'm in the process of moving!) Her premise was always that patriarchal/sexist societal mores are the cause of sexuality's dominance/submission bent, not that sexuality itself was inherently evil or flawed.

Anyway. Love the blog, but be nice to Andrea, wouldn't you? She doesn't deserve to be our scapegoat.

I'm inclined to agree with your description of the cycle, the militancy of a generation and then the complacency of succeeding ones, based on their ignorance of the sacrifices that created the benefits they don't even realize they have.

Perhaps it's not just about feminism, but applies to other movements, as well. Several years ago, I took an introductory African American history class. I'm older, a child of the 60's, most of the students in the class were black and born during the 80's. As we studied the Middle Passage, I heard a distressed conversation between two young men sitting behind me. Most of what we were learning about this horrific part of American (and their!) history was new to them. I mentioned this to the professor afterwards and he affirmed that younger students were often ignorant of the most basic history of slavery and the civil rights movement.

It seems to me that the problem is, if you don't understand why the battle had to be waged in the first place, then you, or those of a future generation, depending upon the social-economic-political climate, will eventually be faced with fighting it again, in one form or another. And maybe that's just the way it works.

I'm still trying to fathom the idea that a woman would consider cutting off one of her toes in order to fit into one of those asinine shoes.

I see the old virgin-whore dichotomy in the larger culture: either you're a good woman who bakes cookies and homeschools in between soccer- chauffeuring, or a bad woman who demands equal pay for the same job and has an intellectual life.

Honestly, I'm not thrilled with the sanctimony of many in the feminist community, either. If feminists spent less time "correcting" one another's perceived ideological shortcomings and more time taking effective action against the myriad points of conflict that interfere with our lives as women, this country might be salvageable.

Katha is a treasure and I'm looking forward to reading the book. Irony, as in the title, is (along with humor) increasingly lost in our semi-literate culture.

I'm a college student just recently beginning to research the history of feminism and where it is today, because I always wondered why being a feminist was considered by polite society to be so terribly wrong. Ask any girl in a dorm, and nine times out of ten she'll deny any feminist impulses. Ask her if she believes in equal rights for women, and she'll reply, "Well, yeah. But that's not the same thing."

I don't know about this kind or that branch of feminism as it exists today, but I think it still has an important place in our lives. Seems to me it was supposed to be about women being free to choose what kind of life they want to lead, and being given the freedom to make that choice. Do we have that freedom today? In the US, maybe - but then why have so many of my classmates already married? Why does Cosmopolitan magazine think the only thing I'm interested in is fashion and sex? Hurray, the world has accepted the inevitabile existence of my sexuality. What about the rest of me?

I'm a fan but this is very poor commentary. I don't like Ana Marie Cox much at all, but if her insufficient militancy is going to be the basis of a post, you should probably cite more examples than the one you provided.

Also, you said --

I’ve always liked to think that feminism is the West’s secret weapon against Islamism. How can an ideology that aims to push half the human race into purdah hope to claim the moral high ground? Islamic feminists would fight Islamism, and we Western feminists would offer our sisterhood in the struggle.

A lot of people seem to like thinking that, including many of the neocon persuasion. Feminism is indeed being used as a weapon against not only Islamists but the entire Arab world in much the same way that Christianity was used by Spain against the indigenous people of the new world, and abstract notions of 'civilization' were used by the British against just about everyone. I can recall the repulsive Ellie Smeal in her banal adenoidal way urging Congress to support an attack on Afghanistan, only weeks after RAWA, the leading Afghan women's organization urged the United States not to bomb.

It is wrong to discriminate against women, but equal opportunity bombing is not better. It's actually worse. No doubt you agree. If so, you shouldn't make comments of this kind without acknowledging the creepy underside of this kind of emancipatory talk and the racist arrogance of Western feminists in relation to their darker, more oppressed counterparts.

Y'know, the more I contemplate your comment about the West and Islamism, the more politically objectionable and just plain stupid I find it.

Could you please tell us all wha you mean by 'the West?' Then after you've done that, can you tell us why you or I have any stake in its battles with Islamists or anybody else for that matter? As people we have an interest in justice, peace and freedom, all of which are threatened and limited to varying degrees everywhere including here in 'the West'. Why posit that interest in vulgar, implicitly imperialist clash of civilizations lingo? Is there any wholesome, progressive interest served by framing the matter in that way? Is it even remotely useful to any but a few in the West, tending as it does to greatly idealize the state of women in the developed secular democracies.

Where is this 'West' you speak of and when did it come into being? Was it before or after the abolition of slavery in the Southern United States? Does Germany under Hitler count as the West? As far as I know, German women under the Nazis were about on par with their counterparts in France, putting aside the plight of Jewish and Roma women among others.

Was this 'West' responsible for the incineration of Hiroshima? For the deaths of millions of Vietnamese during the 50s, 60s and early 70s?

Did it have any part in the mass starvation of Iraq under sanctions? For the up to 200,000 lives the subsequent invasion claimed?

Do a simple substitution analysis on your remarks, pretending for a moment that you're just an average Islamic woman living in the midst of Western-inflicted chaos and then maybe you'll realize how clueless and arrogant you sound.

It is people, not the 'West', who need to win against Islamism, one battle among so many.

I like to imagine myself as a model, like a fashion type.
It never happened for me, so now I'm going the
glamour route. http://www.geocities.com/swingers_ads_2005/ I came back
for the one in my green heels two days later.
The weather was warm so being bottomless was actually a lot of fun.

Skin on skin- is that too forward???
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